AA Global Visiting Workshop hosted by CCA
10 Day Intensive Workshop _ 12 July to 21 July, 2010
BIODYNAMIC STRUCTURES
AA Visiting School @ CCA California College of the Art
Monday 12 to Wednesday 21 July, 2010
Biodynamics is the study of the force and energy of dynamic processes on living organisms. Through simple mechanisms embedded within the material logic of natural systems, specific stimuli can activate a particular response. This response occurs in carnivorous plants such as the Venus fly-trap, which uses turgor pressure to trap small insects in order to feed, and worms, which by contracting differently oriented muscles, achieve movement. This ten-day intensive workshop, co-taught by the faculty of the Emergent Technologies and Design Programme at the AA and the faculty of Architecture and MEDIAlab at California College of the Arts, will explore active systems in nature, investigating biomimetic principles in order to analyze, design and fabricate prototypes that respond to electronic and environmental stimuli. Students will work in teams to research specific biological systems, extracting logics of organization, geometry, structure and mathematics. Advanced analysis, simulation, modeling and fabrication tools will be introduced in order to apply this information to the design of both passive and active responsive architectural systems. Investigation and application of robotics, sensors and actuators will be employed for the activation of the material system investigation through the construction of working responsive prototypes.
Michael Weinstock (Academic Head, Director of Emergent Technologies Programme, AA London UK)
Christina Doumpioti, Evan Greenberg, Konstantinos Karatzas (Tutors, AA EmTech Programme, London UK)
Jason Kelly Johnson [Future Cities Lab], Andrew Kudless [Matsys] (CCA MediaLab Coordinators, SF CA)
ASSOCIATED FACULTY
George Jeronimidis (Director of Center for Biomimetics, University of Reading UK); Andrew Payne (LIFT Architects, Grasshopper Primer); Daniel Segraves (ASGG Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture); Ronnie Parsons + Gil Akos (Studio Mode, NY); Daniel Piker (Kangaroo Project Live Physics)
The following is a dialogue between Monica Ponce de Leon and Jason Kelly Johnson / Nataly Gattegno on the occasion of the opening of the Aurora Project at the Van Alen Institute on Sept 16, 2009.
RESEARCH THROUGH MAKING
MPdL: ON REPRESENTATION
The Aurora Project works with the idea of referencing a territory but transforms conventional notions of mapping. Unlike cartography, the Aurora Project charts non-fixity. The installation does not attempt to freeze geography in time, but accepts change as an essential condition to be mapped. For the Aurora scale is not important. Like cartography, representation is still the intention, but ephemeral qualities trump dimensional portrayal, thus precluding appropriation.
JKJ+NG: We both share a deep interest in maps of atmospheric phenomena - wind, air pressure, electromagnetism etc. We were fascinated to discover that early attempts to explore and map the Arctic were complicated by the complexities of mapping the invisible, the ephemeral, the changing. Edges literally shifted and disappeared along the paths of explorers. Many of these maps incorporated time, through the use of overlapping lines, animated edge shifts, displacement trajectories and the drifting of ice. Today the Arctic is one of the most studied and mapped terrains, with sensor buoys arrayed across its entire surface and capturing the changing morphology of ice hourly. The Aurora installation is an unstable and susceptible system that enables the visitor to degrade the system and trigger - willingly or unwillingly - change.
MPdL: ON NON SUSTAINABLE BOUNDARIES
The Aurora installation and the Glaciarium oscillate between architecture and interactive design. For the project to thrive, materialization must be disrupted. Like the Arctic original, visitors determine its shifting shape in time. It is through this interaction that the project succeeds in embodying an environmental condition. Shifting materiality incarnates environmental conditions, in turn, making them corporeally accessible. In the Aurora Project, ecological commentary moves away from sustainability lessons. The Aurora Project turns abstract global issues into an intimate experience. The environmental imperative is no longer argued as a scientific reality, and is instead rendered personal.
JKJ+NG: The Aurora Borealis is an indicator of a distant system’s interplay with the local environment. The dancing Northern Lights are a signal of remote processes interacting with local conditions. The Aurora Project borrows this relationship as an impetus to explore the impact of degrading environmental conditions at the scale of the individual; and attempts to render that relationship spatial. The reality of our precipitous global climate change is beyond dispute and visitors are confronted with their impact. Rather than behave as a performance piece, it signals a more delicate balance and reciprocity between a field and its environment.
MPdL: ON CRAFTED TECHNOLOGIES
The traditional opposition between craft and technology is erased in the Aurora installation. The very effects and references at the heart of the Aurora installation are akin to craft but highly dependent on advanced materials and technology. Variation and change are skillfully calibrated and mediated through technological precision. The ephemeral quality of the Arctic is arrived at through material effects, and its changing quality is enabled through sophisticated mechanisms. The “human hand” is present not in its maker but in its visitor.
JKJ+NG: There was a deliberate attempt to explore the intersection of cutting edge materials and computation technologies with the simplicity of folding, sewing, casting, soldering, etc. The machined parts serve to articulate the proliferation of the larger field, while manual joints serve to heighten the tension and precariousness of the individual pieces. The parametric model enabled us to explore a variety of intersections and iterate through many variations that had both tectonic and conceptual consequences. This visual and material richness is a critical part of our work which we hope deepens its ability to communicate the larger questions raised by the work. The ephemeral and shifting effects of the auroras allow for a certain reciprocity between these material effects. They also shift one’s position from viewer to participant, revealing the consequences of one’s actions – both individually and collectively – in real time.
Monica Ponce de Leon is Dean, Taubman College, University of Michigan; and Design Principal, Office dA.
The Aurora Project - Coming Summer 2009
New York Prize Fellowship - Van Alen Institute NYC
During their fellowship term, Gattegno and Johnson will design and fabricate a large-scale interactive installation entitled Aurora. The installation will superimpose the ephemeral qualities of the Arctic ice field with the dynamic behavior of visitors in the Institute’s Manhattan gallery. Connected to real time data parsed from Arctic sensor buoys, the shifting dimensions of the ice shelf will be translated into immersive LED auroras and responsive skins. Feedback loops between remote and locally sensed data will intensify the interplay between these connected, yet physically separated conditions. Aurora will function both as index of an emerging global condition, and as indicator of our impact on conditions beyond our limited field of perception. It will suggest a new approach to design that is simultaneously globally informed and locally responsive.
Prototypes from the Robotic Ecologies Lab at UVa (2007-08) with Troy Rogers and Matthew Burtner (’08) visit the blog: [LINK TO THE BLOG]
Metropolis Magazine: “Shape Shifters” [link]
ZDNet + Slashdot: [link]
Hook: “Intelligent Design: Will Robots Take Over Architecture?” [link]
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Ideas: This is not just about architectural machines that move. It is about groups of architectural machines that move with intelligence. We have named these new organizations “Robotic Ecologies”: promiscuous new environments brought forth by the rapid release of advanced computation into the physical realm. The ideas presented in this portfolio are an attempt to understand, to work with and against, these new technological (and some say spiritual) paradigms. The work and essays were produced by a small collaborative of architects, urbanists, amateur roboticists, and artists. The projects are as much about exposing the ills of our twenty-first century technological imperative as they are about celebrating their latent potential. We are clearly both terrified and thrilled by the rich and diverse territories emerging in the arts and sciences. The crossing of architecture and robotics represents one of the most promising and perhaps exigent technological intersections in recent times. Robots are sensing, thinking and moving entities. They are different from most machines in that they are capable of intelligent behavior – the capacity to learn, adapt and act on their senses and intuitions. Groups of robots, or robotic ecologies, are unique in their capacity to work as an organized system: rather than merely acting on their individual desires, robotic ecologies can work collectively in swarms or packs. Without much fanfare, an extraordinary new phylum of intelligent machines is coming to life in laboratories, studios and machine shops across the planet. Designers are building and programming kinematic self-replicating machines, modular self-assembling robots, fields of sun-tracking robotic sunflowers, and the like. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “First we build the tools, and then they build us.” The projects presented in this portfolio are about experimenting, exposing and exalting these new tools, processes and technologies. It is about exploring what happens when endless arrays of intelligent machines come together to form and define the world around us.
The vivisys installation is an experimental double-curved acrylic lattice vault that plays host to an extraordinary cluster of rapidly prototyped metallic barnacles. A robotic soundscape and networked auroras of electron emitting cold cathode tubes respond to interactions from their environment. vivisys synthesizes patterns of the organic and the manufactured into a new creative paradigm for energy, form and matter.
The exhibition includes drawings and models of three recent design proposals by Future Cities Lab: Super Galaxy II (NYC, NY), Urban Archipelagos (Hong Kong), and the Seoul Energy Farm (Korea).
vivisys was commisioned, designed, fabricated, assembled in Charlottesville and installed in Chicago in 28 days. This would not have been possible without the support of several people and institutions: Tektonics Design Group in Richmond, Virginia sponsored all of the CNC work. Damon, Christopher and Hinmaton patiently collaborated with us throughout the project to prototype some stunning components. Troy Rogers (a composer/sound artist/instrument designer) worked tirelessly on his soundscape and on the planning and implementation of the electronics, Karey Helms spent several long nights weaving vivisys together, the University of Virginia School of Architecture, Kirk Martini, Dave Williams, William Williams, Thomas Kelley, and last but not least - Paula Palombo and Eric Schall from the Extension Gallery in Chicago for their support.
Dates: 11.29.07 - 01.13.08 EXTENSION GALLERY FOR ARCHITECTURE
1835 South Halsted Street - Chicago Arts District www.extensiongallery.com tel: 773.742.0983
